The Murder Book by Jonathan Kellerman Page B

Even in black satin flat slippers she was nearly eye level with Milo. Heels would have made her a giantess.
    “Ye-es?” Watchful eyes, deliberate contralto.
    Out came the badge. “Detective Sturgis, Mrs.…”
    “Schwartzman. What brings a detective to Bel Air?”
    “Well, ma’am, last Friday your neighbors had a party—”
    “A party,” she said, as if the description was absurd. She aimed the brush at the empty Colonial. “More like rooting at the trough. The aptly named Cossacks.”
    “Aptly named?”
    “Barbarians,” said Mrs. Schwartzman. “A scourge.”
    “You’ve had problems with them before.”
    “They lived there for less than two years, let the place go to seed. That’s their pattern, apparently. Move in, degrade, move out.”
    “To something bigger.”
    “But of
course
. Bigger is better, right? They’re vulgarians. No surprise, given what the father does.”
    “What does he do?”
    “He destroys period architecture and substitutes grotesquerie. Packing cartons pretending to be office buildings, those drive-in monstrosities — strip malls. And
she
… desperately blond, the sweaty anxiety of an
arriviste
. Both of them gone all the time. No supervision for those brats.”
    “Mrs. Schwart—”
    “If you’d care to be precise, it’s Dr. Schwartzman.”
    “Pardon me, Doctor—”
    “I’m an endocrinologist — retired. My husband is Professor Arnold Schwartzman, the orthopedic surgeon. We’ve lived here twenty-eight years, had wonderful neighbors for twenty-six — the Cantwells, he was in metals, she was the loveliest person. The two of them passed on within months of one another. The house went into probate, and
they
bought it.”
    “Who lives on the other side?” said Milo, indicating the stone walls.
    “Officially, Gerhard Loetz.”
    Milo shot her a puzzled look.
    “German industrialist.” As if everyone should know. “Baron Loetz has homes all over the world. Palaces, I’ve been told. He’s rarely here. Which is fine with me, keeps the neighborhood quiet. Baron Loetz’s property extends to the mountains, the deer come down to graze. We get all sorts of wildlife in the canyon. We love it. Everything was perfect until
they
moved in. Why are you asking all these questions?”
    “A girl went missing,” said Milo. “There’s a rumor she attended a party on the Westside Friday night.”
    Dr. Schwartzman shook her head. “Well, I wouldn’t know about that. Didn’t get a close look at those hoodlums, didn’t want to. Never left the house. Afraid to, if you’d like to know. I was alone, Professor Schwartzman was in Chicago, lecturing. Usually, that doesn’t bother me, we have an alarm, used to have an Akita.” The hand around the brush tightened. Man-sized knuckles bulged. “But Friday night was alarming. So
many
of them, running in and out, screaming like banshees. As usual, I called the patrol, had them stay until the last barbarian left. Even so, I was nervous. What if they came back?”
    “But they didn’t.”
    “No.”
    “So you never got close enough to see any of the kids.”
    “That’;s correct.”
    Milo considered showing her the death photo anyway. Decided against it. Maybe the story hadn’t hit the papers because someone upstairs wanted it that way. Dr. Schwartzman’s hostility to the Cossacks might very well fuel another rumor. Working alone like this, he didn’t want to screw up big-time.
    “The patrol,” he said, “not the police—”
    “That’s what we do in Bel Air, Detective. We pay the patrol, so they respond. Your department, on the other hand — there seems to be a belief among law enforcement types that the problems of the… fortunate are trivial. I learned that the hard way, when Sumi — my doggie — was murdered.”
    “When was this?”
    “Last summer. Someone poisoned him. I found him right there.” Indicating the front lawn. “They unlatched the gate and fed him meat laced with rat poison. That time, I did call your